I had an interesting meeting a week back with a prospect I had never heard of. Here’s what happened: my team fielded a call from someone who was adamant they needed to speak to me, and me only. He was the Marketing Director of a large company here in the Midlands and he wasn’t going to put the phone down…

One of my sales trainers had an interesting discussion with a sales team recently, where the team were seeking advice on how they could make their sales records less over-whelming. No-one had ever given them recommendations on how to make notes. The question has rarely come up, but it’s worth asking. Should you make notes on everything that has been…

What do you consider to be the greatest skill that any salesperson should develop to the level of excellence? Presentation skills? The ability to negotiate effectively? Prospecting skills? Although all these are definitely important, the key skill that salespeople always need to develop is the art of active listening. It really does set the average apart from the excellent. But…

Most salespeople we see on our courses like to consider themselves as consultants rather than salespeople. They tend to think that salespeople get tarred with the same brush and like to think they can rise above this label and be viewed as a consultant because it sounds better to prospects and looks better on their business card. But when we…

When we are working with a client, we need to know what would be the best way to encourage them to make decisions that draw them to our products and services. It’s been known for some time by psychologists that people are driven in two different directions when they are making decisions. One way is ‘away from’ pain; the other…

“He keeps talking in techno waffle! I don‘t understand half of what he says. I’ve got a simple problem that needs solving, not something that requires a Rocket Scientist!“ – A Confused Prospect I come across this a lot. You might be selling something that is pretty complicated as it is; so why make it even more complicated by not…

Culture plays a funny game with us. We often get stuck in a rut and blame things outside our control for how we feel and the results we get. The culture we exist in keeps us in a headlock and rubs our face in it whenever we want to change anything. Culture has been deemed as ‘the way we do…

Many surveys have been carried out asking for business-buyers’ reactions to salespeople who approach their businesses. Many buyers are impressed by the level of knowledge that some salespeople bring with them, and often comment to us about their professionalism and business acumen. However there are still too many salespeople out there who simply try to sell their products. They believe…

The art of selling has changed dramatically over the last 30 years, and the way that sales people and business owners now prospect and sell to the customers has moved on significantly from the one-way sales monologue and cold calling techniques that used to reign. Over the last several decades, the sales industry has become focused on the consultative selling…

On our courses, we often ask sales people ‘what exactly do you sell?‘ After we’ve got through the list of products and services, they cotton on that people, their prospects, don’t buy those things. So we get answers like ‘solutions to problems’ and ‘opportunities to expand their businesses’. But are those obvious answers always correct? Yes and No! Often your…